This year we really made the most of September’s Open House Weekend, with three wildly different activities:

– the annual rally of the Paris Vespa Club,
– the incredible interiors at École Militaire, and
– a visit that we were kinda excited about and kinda scared of – the Paris Sewers Museum, all three on the Left Bank not far from nos hôtels!

To get the most out of Open House weekend, it’s best to start early! We had a full programme lined up for the two days, starting at 10am with the Paris Vespa Club rally.

Participants met up at the Clinique du Scooter in the 13th arrondissement, and we saw about thirty Vespas ready to start their tour of the Bois de Vincennes and other parts of the city. 99% male, the event allowed us to get up close and scrutinise scooters from every era, including 100% electric ones and the latest collaboration – a Vespa designed by, er, Justin Bieber.

If you’d like to keep abreast with what the Paris Vespa Club is up to, check out their website, Facebook page or Instagram account.

Next on our list was École Militaire near the Eiffel Tower, a military school with dozens of horses, but also a very grand chapel and some equally grand offices for the higher ranks. 😀

And the last stop of our day was something rather out of the ordinary – the Paris Sewers Museum.

Open since 1975 and renovated in 2021, this is where you’ll learn all about how the city deal with its liquid waste (including rainwater). For example, you may be surprised to hear that much of the system worksh simply through gravity.

If you’re thinking of a change of profession, there are details about the various jobs involving the sewers, and a section of the museum explains how the Seine will soon be a lot cleaner (clean enough to swim in) thanks to the construction of a collecting tank near the Austerlitz mainline station, capable of stocking over 50,000 m³ of water (which will be kept aside rather than poured into the river whenever there a large storm).

And just in case you were wondering about the smell of the place, it’s really not that bad (much beter than we had imagined), you’ll see 😜

The Paris Sewers Museum (here) is open every day except Mondays from 10am-5pm (last ticket 4pm)

Admission: 9€ / 7€ / free for under 18s and any European citizen under 26 years old

Website / Facebook / Instagram

Le chantier du futur bassin d'Austerlitz se poursuit. 👷‍♀️👷‍♂️

Objectif : rendre la Seine propice à la baignade pour les Jeux de @Paris2024 et y installer des sites pérennes dès 2025. pic.twitter.com/qQaFkgKBYN

— Paris (@Paris) September 17, 2023

The next Open House Weekend is on 21st/22nd September 2024. Start planning now!